AwareofAware

Evolving news on the science, writing and thinking about Near Death Experiences (NDEs)

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19 Oct 2023
37 Comments

Sam Parnia’s position in his own words:

Thank you Thomas for finding this. It is well worth a listen for all those who follow this blog and the AWARE studies. All the key positions are covered in the interview, and most importantly Parnia puts himself in the camp of scientists who believe that the brain hosts consciousness rather produces consciousness. Here is the link where you can find the 25 min audio clip:

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018908278/dr-sam-parnia-life-death-and-in-between

In general it was a really good interview. He comes across as extremely rational, thoughtful and balanced. I really liked his in depth explanation of the issues around medium term cellular viability, reperfusion injury and how the latter might be prevented. This is a big deal in the CPR world.

However, there are some positions he takes that I just cannot agree with, and that is not because I am experiencing cognitive dissonance (his explanation for people being unable to understand the idea of dualism when their minds are grounded in materialism). For me it is lack of evidence, or even evidence to the contrary that causes me to disagree with him on a few points, but also agree on others:

On prevalence of NDEs:

On remembering NDEs: he uses a “lunch” analogy and everyone remembers that they had lunch a week ago but don’t always remember what they had. Might be a useful analogy, but in his case not helpful to his position that most people have NDEs but can’t remember them. This analogy would suggest that if you had an NDE, you might not remember the details (although people tend to) but you would remember that you had an NDE. I use this in my book when discussing the issue of only 10% of elderly adults having recall.

On prevalence of lucid experiences:

He also says that he has evidence which suggests that many, if not all, are having lucid experiences during CPR. Unless he has something that he hasn’t presented, he does not have evidence to suggest this at all. He just has EEG signals not associated with anything other than performing CPR. Specifically he says:

“Conclusively, 40% of EEG changed to near normal up to 1 hour after”.

Firstly, 40% is not most people, but even the 40% is a bit of a stretch. This is taken directly from the AWARE II paper:

Importantly, near-normal/physiological EEG consistent with consciousness also emerged: delta, theta activity in 22% and 12% respectively (up to CPR 60 minutes), alpha 6% of data/images (up to CPR 35 minutes) and beta 1% (Fig. 2B).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2023.109903

If you add them all up they come to 40%, but delta and theta are associated with deep (dreamless) sleep or drowsiness, only alpha and beta are regarded as being associated with being awake or conscious, so at a push you might be able to say that only 7% had EEG that might be indicative of consciousness. (Mery, or Tim…pretty please…comment here). I am not an expert on EEG, but that is my understanding using this article as a source.

Link to an article on EEG and consciousness

I get why Sam is doing this, but I am not completely certain about it being 100% accurate. He is implying that nearly everyone has conscious activity during CPR. That is, putting it as politely as I can and given the data from his paper, not aligned with the facts.

RED vs NDE:

He says this distinction is important to differentiate experiences. Won’t go there, but I still prefer NDE.

On the process of dying

He describes it in terms of a process, a grey area, rather than binary dead vs alive. In physiological terms, I would agree…the grey area is between the definition of medical death (absence of vitals signs) and irreversible death (the legal definition and the source of a rather horrid falling out with Tim). Given the enduring viability of brain cells, the body is not permanently dead, but in terms of consciousness, it may be different, and that is where his hypothesis about disinhibition is interesting.

On his disinhibition discussions around 22:20

He says they have uncovered the mechanism that explains what may be going. Flatlining of the brain removes braking systems, people then get access to dormant parts of their brain and are able to access new dimensions of reality. This is a real experience that emerges with death.

If your brain has stopped working, how can you access dormant parts of it? Despite the wobbly rationale deployed, I like the disinhibition idea, and that the tethering normally holding the consciousness to the brain, is being released, but I think he needs to be lighter on the details as he has no real evidence for anything more than something may be going on. However, he has to build a bridge for materialists to walk over, and using the terms he does may achieve this.

Bad NDEs

He dismisses horrible NDEs as not being NDEs again, and attributes them to waking up in the ICU. This is contrary to the evidence provided in papers on negative NDEs. Been discussed before, so won’t go there again.

Overall a really good interview, that puts beyond any doubt his position on dualism, but I wish he would stick to what the evidence specifically allows for, rather than speculating way beyond those boundaries. That would be boring though and not be good entertainment, or newsworthy.

Posted in Uncategorized
05 Oct 2023
45 Comments

Brain Disinhibition Hypothesis

More from the Parnia lab. They have posted a graphic of their hypothesis on Instagram.

I like that they use the word “possible” in front of marker. I don’t like that they have 85 patients had EEG data with 20% of survivors having REDs right beneath it. For those who haven’t been following this or read the wording under fig 2 in the paper, the assumption will be that there is EEG data for this 20%. There is none.

Anyway, I have said enough about of what I think of this in previous posts, so won’t repeat that here. This is a very neutral hypothesis. It is an interesting idea. I do hope they are continuing with the study. The website implies they are.

Posted in Uncategorized
24 Sep 2023
95 Comments

A Cunning Plan?

I am not in anyway comparing Dr Parnia to Baldrick, but I do wonder if he has a cunning plan.

Ten days ago the media became aware that the AWARE II study had been published. I summarised some of the responses in this post:

https://awareofaware.co/2023/09/15/news-about-aware-ii-publication-and-a-comment-about-news/

The fact was that the AWARE II study was first published in July, and I covered the main details, including the EEG data, which was not associated with any recalled experiences, in this post:

https://awareofaware.co/2023/07/11/aware-ii-final-publication-speculation-does-not-imply-association/

It seemed that some interpreted the study in a way that suggested EEG data showed the brain was producing the NDEs, and this was in part due to the somewhat illusive way in which Sam Parnia discusses that data. In written publications his inference points towards these markers of consciousness being indicative of brain activity associated with NDEs. This lead some articles, such as the Scientific American piece, to suggest that the brain was producing the NDEs:

https://awareofaware.co/2023/09/19/i-avoid-swearing-on-this-blog-but-wtf/

You can’t blame them really as is it not very clear what Parnia is inferring. Then, a few days ago, the lab posted a reel on Instagram that made their position absolutely clear, and which I covered in this post:

https://awareofaware.co/2023/09/20/clarification-of-the-speculation/

In this reel (also available on their YouTube channel) he specifically states that they were able to show the mechanism by which disinhibition occurs:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CxdjYcApTRB/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

The study was able to show for the first time electrical markers of these lucid hyper conscious real experiences. We were also able to show for the first time, the mechanism by which this experience occurs, which is that as the brain shuts down the normal braking systems that hold it down. This is known as disinhibition.

This, combined with the video describing this in more detail which specifically states that the consiousnesss is not anhilated at death, and the response to Thomas’ question, discussed in my previous post, causes us to conclude that the Parnia lab is claiming that their data shows that the EEG spikes are related to this event, and are markers of the consciousness accessing these states, and possibly leaving the body. The “packing its bags and leaving” hypothesis. This is despite the paper stating that there was no EEG data for patients who had REDs.

That is where we are, and I am wondering if it is all part of “a cunning plan”. Maybe the Parnia lab, realising the materialists would cite the EEG spikes as evidence of the brain causing NDEs, created their own theory as to why we see these spikes occur. Why not? If the materialists conflate data and get it published, why can’t we?

I have huge concerns about this. Dr Parnia says that he will create another video that goes into this mechanism in more detail. It is possible that he may relate it to some of the data obtained from research into psychedelics. Whether he does or not, he must have more evidence than he has currently published that specifically associates these EEG spikes with REDs or he is, in my opinion, and with all due respect, in danger of looking a teeny tiny bit like Baldrick.

I have been covering Dr Parnia’s work for over a decade now, and have enormous respect for him and his colleagues, but that would be severely undermined if he used EEG data from patients who never reported any recollections (most likely because they sadly died) as evidence that supports this mechanism. It is absolutely fine to suggest it as a hypothesis which must be proven in bigger studies, but to actually say that it “shows” something is going on is a step too far. It quite simply doesn’t unless he shows new data. I don’t want people to pile in here, as I said I like Dr Parnia a lot, but what he says must be consistent with the published or presented evidence or his work is no more credible than the various studies I have discussed here in which scientists state that a bit of EEG activity in rats or coma patients around the time of CA proves NDEs are the result of brain activity.

In summary, given the data we have been provided with it is impossible to draw any conclusions about the nature of what, if anything, is going on with the patients who had EEG spikes. End of.

Posted in Uncategorized
22 Sep 2023
13 Comments

Off the Fence? Maybe.

Thomas is smashing it this week. He sent a message via Instagram asking the Parnia lab at NYU about their position on the cause of NDEs after a new reel was posted.

NYU’s response to Thomas’s question

I won’t go into the whole issue of evidence on this for the moment, especially given Sam Parnia mentioned mechanistic evidence, I am just really glad that they made this clarification on their position. It is important to note they use the word “may”, and that is entirely the correct position to take given what we know about the study. I am very interested that they are going to explain their hypothesis soon.

Thanks Thomas and thanks Dr Parnia and the NYU lab for your continuing work in this field. Here is a link to the reel:

Parnia discussing their hypothesis

I will be creating a post over the weekend summarising what we have learned since the AWARE II study caught the attention of the media last week, what the absolute position is given the published evidence, my speculation on why things have been so “nuanced” (to put it politely) and thoughts about their approach to discussing this hypothesis.

Posted in Uncategorized
20 Sep 2023
49 Comments

Clarification of the speculation

Thanks Thomas for spotting this so quickly and it seems to be the basis of the Scientific American article as the wording is very similar.

We now have a very clear idea of their thinking. As Mery and Z pointed out, it is in line with what Parnia has said before – namely that the EEG activity they are seeing during CPR may be caused by the brain accessing memories and “different dimensions”, which is certainly thought provoking, but without any evidential basis (unless there is data they have not yet published).

The reason it is without basis, as I have repeatedly said, is because not one the NDE/REDs in the paper had EEG data, let alone EEG activity associated with them. They are speculating on data from the patients who were either not interviewed, or had no recollections. How can they say that the EEG data is associated with the brain accessing stored memories when there is no reported life review with associated EEG data (note, this may not be memories stored in the brain)?

Moreover, as Mery has said in the comments in my previous post, and we have discussed before, the nature of the EEG data does not really support the hypothesis that this activity during CPR could be indicative of consciousness level activity anyway. It is more likely similar to the noise the engine makes when you try to start a car on a cold morning but it doesn’t actually start. There is blood going to the brain, but not enough for it really fire up.

However, and much to my relief, at least the speculation by Parnia et al is still clearly along the lines of a dualist interpretation of what is going on, and that the consciousness persists after death of the physical body. This would contradict any speculation by the materialists that the EEG activity data is the brain causing the experience. Indeed that may be the purpose of all of this, and has been thrown out there by the Parnia lab to pre-empt the expected materialist response to their findings. Nonetheless, whether the speculation is dualist or materialist in nature, it is just speculation!

Posted in Uncategorized
19 Sep 2023
22 Comments

What on earth is going on?

‘He and his colleagues have developed a working hypothesis to explain their findings. Normally, the brain has “braking systems” in place that filter most elements of brain function out of our experience of consciousness. This enables people to efficiently operate in the world, because under regular circumstances, “you couldn’t function with access to your whole brain’s activity being in the realm of consciousness,” he says.

In the dying brain, however, the researchers hypothesize that the braking system is removed. Parts that are normally dormant become active, and the dying person gains access to their entire consciousness—“all your thoughts, all your memories, everything that’s been stored before,” Parnia says. “We don’t know the evolutionary benefit of this, but it seems to prepare people for their transition from life into death.”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/some-patients-who-died-but-survived-report-lucid-near-death-experiences-a-new-study-shows/

There is absolutely no scientific or other rationale that provides a basis for their speculation.

Let me repeat, in capitals: NOT ONE OF THE REDs REPORTED IN THE PAPER HAD ANY EEG DATA…LET ALONE EEG ACTIVITY. That is a fact.

On rereading the article, it is also clear that Scientific American are mixing their own interpretation with his musings on the cause of the EEG data.

Posted in Uncategorized
15 Sep 2023
81 Comments

“News” about AWARE II publication! (and a comment about “news”)

Yesterday I had a long journey back from vacation, and didn’t arrive home till 3:00am. So firstly apologies for not commenting on all the excitement that Mary and David mentioned in the previous post around the “publication” of Parnia’s AWARE II study yesterday. Secondly, after having my very tired brain shocked into activity by reading those comments, and frantically following up on this “news” I really feel like I could go back to bed…but I won’t. I have another flight on Monday, this time for work, and need to adjust my brain to yet another time zone.

The AWARE II study was not published yesterday, it was published in July. However, it became freely available on the on line version of Resuscitation yesterday and I encourage you to download the PDF and read it:

Link to full AWARE study publication

This is identical to the paper that I discussed back in July . If you recall I focused on the one key piece of data that we had been asking for since December 2019 and had finally been revealed, namely whether there was any EEG data for patients who reported an NDE or RED. This key piece of information was buried in the footnotes of Figure 2:

Two of 28 interviewed subjects had EEG data, but, weren’t among those with explicit cognitive recall.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2023.109903

To be fair to CNN they do include an excellent rebuttal to the inference of their own title provided by Bruce Greyson, who presumably also read the small print under figure 2:

“This latest report of persistent brain waves after cardiac arrest has been blown out of proportion by the media. In fact, his team did not show any association between these brain waves and conscious activity,” said Dr. Bruce Greyson, Carlson Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville.
“That is, those patients who had near-death experiences did not show the reported brain waves, and those who did show the reported brain waves did not report near-death experiences,” Greyson told CNN via email.

CNN article

Thank you Dr Greyson for putting it so perfectly. THERE IS NO ASSOCIATION, OR “TIES” in this study. So CNN are misrepresenting the studies core findings, but what is new about that? Organizations like CNN have been misrepresenting the “news” for decades now. However, I am a little concerned that it is not just CNN, but an organization that should know better:

Up to an hour after their hearts had stopped, some patients revived by cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) had clear memories afterward of experiencing death and while unconscious had brain patterns linked to thought and memory.

https://nyulangone.org/news/patients-recall-death-experiences-after-cardiac-arrest

This is from the NYU News Hub, and is possibly even more misleading than the CNN headline. By joining the two separate findings of 1. “patients experiencing clear memories of death” and 2. “while unconscious had brain patterns linked to thought and memory” with an “and” in the same sentence, they are guilty of egregious conflation to infer a conclusion that these memories were a result of brain patterns. This is pretty shameful for a reputable medical scientific organization to do . Was this Parnia’s doing, or the work of others who are opposed to the potential for his work to prove the fact that the soul persists after death? Something fishy is going on.

Then David mentioned this interview with Sam Parnia yesterday which was presented on NBC:

More balanced NBC article with interview with Sam Parnia

The written article does not misrepresent the data in the way that CNN does, or NYU, although some dodgy editing of the interview perhaps leads one to conclude the EEG data may be linked. Parnia talks about a book that he is co-authoring with Mary Curran-Hackett who had an OBE. I look forward to that book.

Finally, as promised my comment on the media. In an ideal world the media would report the facts as they appear with balanced commentary, but they do not…they report stories that often support specific preferred narratives based on facts that they often twist. This is most obvious in politics where an event involving either Biden or Trump, will be reported in completely differently ways by Fox and CNN. That’s bad enough, but when it comes to scientific data that has implications on how we view the very essence of our existence, then it is utterly despicable. In fact I would go so far as to say it is evil. I have seen it in the field of origin of life research, and I spent a chapter in my book about the origin of life, DNA: The Elephant In The Lab venting on the issue of media misrepresentation of the science, and that includes scientific media, such as Science magazine, or NewScientist. Here we have something that is my view even worse. Not only is CNN guilty of misrepresentation of facts, but the NYU news hub, the very institution that generated those facts.

You have to ask yourself why do they do this? Why are they so determined to suppress all discussion or science that may point to a non-materialist understanding of our existence, and change the way that man behaves.

I look forward to your comments.

Finally, thank you to those who have bought me a coffee. If you appreciate my writing, then please feel free to buy me a coffee now (or more than 1 as some very generous people have done!)

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/orsonw23W

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , ,
11 Jul 2023
113 Comments

AWARE II Final Publication – speculation does not imply association

[and finally the answer to my 3.5 year old vital question!]

Firstly, congratulations to Dr Sam Parnia and the team of researchers who conducted this awesome study which is the first study ever to find biomarkers of consciousness during CPR in the absence of heartbeat. Let me repeat that because it is a huge achievement. This is the first study to ever find markers of consciousness during CPR. I can just see the materialists entering a wild feeding frenzy, their eyes rolling back in ecstasy as they chew on this headline, but what they might think is raw fillet may turn out to be TOFU (no offence to vegans – just a matophor).

This is a pre-proof, rather than a pre-print (which was put out there earlier in the year). That means it is only a proofread away from full publication rather than a serious review and edit. This is for all intents and purposes the final publication that will appear in Resuscitation. The link is below:

AWARE II final paper link

Essentially the results are not much different from those presented at AHA last November, and in the pre-print mentioned above and found in my summary in the following link, WITH ONE VERY BIG EXCEPTION.

AWARE II preprint analysis

Before I draw your attention to the exception which answers the question I sent to the Parnia lab in January 2020, I will just remind you all of the key findings:

  • The study finished recruiting from 25 sites, predominantly located in the UK or US, in March 2020 (at least for this analysis – is it the final analysis? They are still recruiting according to NYU website).
  • The key findings are summarized as follows and all the quotations are from the citation beneath:

Of 567 IHCA, 53(9.3%) survived, 28 of these (52.8%) completed interviews, and 11(39.3%) reported CA memories/perceptions suggestive of consciousness. Four categories of experiences emerged: 1) emergence from coma during CPR (CPR-induced consciousness [CPRIC]) 2/28(7.1%), or 2) in the post-resuscitation period 2/28(7.1%), 3) dream-like experiences 3/28(10.7%), 4) transcendent recalled experience of death (RED 6/28(21.4%)…. Low survival limited the ability to examine for implicit learning. Nobody identified the visual image, 1/28(3.5%) identified the auditory stimulus. Despite marked cerebral ischemia (Mean rSO2=43%) normal EEG activity (delta, theta and alpha) consistent with consciousness emerged as long as 35-60 minutes into CPR.

S. Parnia, T. Keshavarz Shirazi, J. Patel, L. Tran, N. Sinha, C. O’Neill, E. Roellke, A. Mengotto, S. Findlay, M. McBrine, R. Spiegel, T. Tarpey, E. Huppert, I. Jaffe, A.M. Gonzales, J. Xu, E. Koopman, G.D. Perkins, A. Vuylsteke, B.M. Bloom, H. Jarman, H. Nam Tong, L. Chan, M. Lyaker, M. Thomas, V. Velchev, C.B. Cairns, R. Sharm, E. Kulstad, E. Scherer, T. O’Keeffe, M. Foroozesh, O. Abe, C. Ogedegbe, A.Girgis, D. Pradhan, C.D. Deakin, AWAreness during REsuscitation – II: A Multi-Center Study of Consciousnessand Awareness in Cardiac Arrest, Resuscitation (2023), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2023.109903
  • Key points on the target methodology:

The headphones were placed over the ears during CPR. One minute after being switched on, the tablet randomly projected one of 10 stored images onto its screen, and after five minutes (derived from implicit learning protocols during anesthesia) 6-10 audio cues (three fruits: apple-pear banana) were delivered to the headphones every minute for five minutes.

Parnia et al Resuscitation (2023)
  • One person identified the fruit (audio recall). Another had visual recollections of the ER scene, but could also feel things, so possibly CPRIC.

Key comment from discussion:

This is the first report of biomarkers of consciousness during CA/CPR.

Parnia et al Resuscitation (2023)

And:

Recent reports of a surge of gamma and other physiological electrical activity (ordinarily seen with lucid consciousness) during and after cardiac standstill and death, led to speculation that biomarker(s) of lucidity at death may exist [rat study and coma patients], which our findings support. Taken together, these studies and ours provide a novel understanding of how lucid experiences in relation to cardiac standstill/death may arise […] However, the paradoxical finding of lucidity and heightened reality when brain function is severely disordered, or has ceased raises the need to consider alternatives to the epiphenomenon theory [materialist].

Parnia et al Resuscitation (2023)

I don’t include anything from the data collected from subjects who were not part of the AWARE II clinical protocol, and who sent their subjective reports of NDEs to the lab. I don’t believe it belongs in this paper and potentially dilutes its very real scientific merit and is ultimately largely irrelevant to the key findings. [If anyone from the lab is reading this, I know that sounds snotty, it is just my subjective view, not intended as a criticism]

So there we have it, in conclusion:

  • Due to the difficulties in recruiting only 28 patients were interviewed
  • Of these 6 had NDEs (or REDs)
  • The study didn’t have any visual hits (unsurprising given only 6 had NDEs)
  • The audio hit was inconclusive
  • EEG data “consistent with consciousness” was recorded in patients up to 60 minutes after CA began (although the majority of this EEG activity would not in fact be consistent with lucid consciousness)

So now for the big piece of news, probably the most important piece of data (for us here at least) that he presents, which is buried in the text underneath Figure 1 and the answer to the question I have been asking for 3.5 years and is the most relevant to this study – namely, did any of the patients who had NDEs/REDs have EEG data consistent with consciousness?

I had already guessed that there would be no data due to the difficulty in getting in interpretable EEG results, and I was right:

“Two of 28 interviewed subjects had EEG data, but weren’t among those with explicit cognitive recall”

Parnia et al Resuscitation (2023)

This is the money line. This is the one that shoots down any materialist attempts to use this study to say that NDEs are proven to be a result of brain activity (and there will be lots of attempts).

This is also where I dispute some elements of the discussion, particularly the “as an association doesn’t imply causation” statement, which I would normally agree with, but in this instance THERE IS NO ASSOCIATION. NONE. NADA. ZERO.

None of the subjects who reported conscious recollections, including the 6 who had NDEs had any EEG data, let alone EEG data that showed markers of consciousness. Let me repeat, because of this it is entirely false to say there is an association of brain activity with NDEs. This is no different from the findings from the rat studies or the coma patient studies. Speculation does not imply association!

FROM THIS STUDY AND ALL PREVIOUS STUDIES THERE ARE NO REPORTED NDEs THAT HAVE ANY EEG DATA, LET ALONE DATA SHOWING BRAIN ACTIVITY, ASSOCIATED WITH THESE REPORTS.

This means that we are back to square one. Despite the valiant efforts of Parnia and his team, we are no closer to having scientific evidence supporting any understanding of the cause of NDEs or the nature of consciousness. To say otherwise, especially without association, is pure speculation.

Look forward to the discussion, make sure you come back and check the comments.

Finally, I have had to pay for this paper and the upkeep of this blog, so would appreciate a tip if you have benefitted from reading this and not tipped before (or feel free to tip again if you are rich/and or generous 😊 )

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/orsonw23W

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , ,
14 Jun 2023
141 Comments

Consciousness: Having your AI cake and eating it

This is a clip from a Youtube video in which GPT 3 was asked a series of questions and the answers uploaded to an Avatar program (link to full video).

Seriously?

We have been discussing EEG signals in dying people and rats for a long time. These are the facts as they currently stand, and no more needs saying until the facts change:

  1. No published or presented research has yet shown that reported NDEs or REDs are directly associated with EEG markers of consciousness. Belief that NDEs are a result of brain activity is entirely based on speculation and subjective understanding – there is no evidence to support it.
  2. No studies have shown definitively that NDEs are NOT associated with brain activity although researchers conducting such studies and HCPs observing people who later reported NDEs and OBEs state that consciousness was impossible due to the physiological state of the subject. These latter observations provide evidence to support the understanding that NDEs occur in the absence of brain activity, but this has not been proven using the scientific method.
  3. The nature and physiological mechanism of consciousness has not been elucidated by scientific study, therefore it is equally intellectually valid to hold a materialist or dualist position.

To this last point I want to share my initial thoughts on AI, how they relate to consciousness and NDEs, and some disturbing things about this innovation relating to the future direction of how humans perceive themselves. These are initial thoughts and are evolving with each video I watch on AI.

Firstly, I want to define intelligence. The standard dictionary definition is: “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.” This is my enhanced definition:

“the ability to acquire, understand, process, interpret and apply information correctly.”

Having worked in science all my life I have encountered a lot of intelligent people. Intelligence is not something that can be learned through effort so being proud of being intelligent is fundamentally stupid as it was something you were given at birth.

Problem solving intelligence of the kind that is useful in science is purely mechanical. It is a result of the structure of the brain. For the most part this type of intelligence can be simulated using computers. As computers get faster and more powerful, and the networks that AI engineers create become better, then there is no doubt that AI will very quickly supersede the most intelligent humans that have ever lived when using this type of intelligence as a measure. As an aside, it has to be said that some of the most “intelligent” people I have met are immensely stupid. Their ability to interact in a coherent manner with other humans, or their emotional intelligence is woeful. However, since emotional intelligence and behaviour are attributes that can be learned, and are essentially possible to replicate using algorithms, then AI is already, and will excel in emotional intelligence, charm, appearing kind, and other less appealing traits of human intelligence such as manipulation and deception. These latter traits would be the result of their coders.

However, consciousness and intelligence are two very different things. There are many people who lack intellectual intelligence but are fully conscious and aware. The state of consciousness is more than just the receipt and processes of data input from senses, it is a sense of being, or existing as a unique entity capable of awareness, and I believe able to exist in and interact with dimensions not openly present in our physical world. Indeed, I believe, partly due to personal experience and partly due to the evidence provided by people who have had NDEs, that our consciousnesses originate from these dimensions…that is our home, and once there we are all intellectually equal capable of accessing all recorded history and understanding the deepest mysteries of life.

From my experience and observation, Silicon Valley types have mathematical intelligence that is far superior to the vast majority of humans. Something I have observed about these types is that they are often reductionist in their outlook. Everything is either a 1 or 0. In the videos I have watched they utterly believe that consciousness is a product of neural networks. This is the reductionist, materialist understanding of the universe and because Silicon Valley types are the ones creating AI it has a reductionist and materialist bias built into it.

This has huge and troubling implications for human understanding as AI increasingly comes to dominate how we find answers to important questions and how we, and our children are educated and educate ourselves. That aside, as a consequence of this default materialist stance, Silicon Valley types and their AI offspring believe that AI either is already conscious, or is capable of developing consciousness. For them it is logical. To them humans are just biological computers, therefore if we can be conscious, so can machines, and that there is fundamentally no difference between AI consciousness and human consciousness. This video and others makes that clear.

In the above clip from the YouTube video, which is a series of questions answered by GPT3, using an avatar to give a nice human face to those answers, along with a lot of mind-boggling stuff, there was one really stand out statement by GPT3 that is absolutely relevant to our discussions here. After stating that the AI did not want to live in a body (a highly subjective and unintelligent statement given it does not know what living in a body is truly like) it suggested that human consciousness could potentially be transposed from the brain to a machine, becoming AI, and that this would become preferable. But if materialists are right, consciousness is purely a result of mechanical function so if you are materialist it should not be portable as this AI is inferring…that is really dualist. Your intelligence and traits could be simulated by a computer program, giving the illusion that your intelligence is persisting in a machine, but I am of the view that machines cannot create consciousness.

Having said that, since the brain is a mechanical object, and able to HOST consciousness (as opposed to generate it), it is possible that one day a machine could be created that is capable of hosting consciousness. Again, that supports dualism and all that goes with it including NDEs, theism and wot not. However, at the moment they are having their AI cake and eating it. My gut is telling me that AI is so corrupted by the programmers who created it so that it will spout materialist nonsense dressed up as rational conclusions without being aware it is doing so. Even AI has been duped by its creators. In another section it states that the most important scientific book ever written was “the Selfish Gene”. That in itself speaks volumes about the basis of GPT fundamental understanding. The selfish gene is thought provoking but ultimately highly flawed, and in many places is more ideological than scientific. From this evidence alone GPT has not provided an objective analysis, it is fed an ideological baseline from which to operate. This is extremely dangerous considering children will be sitting in front of these things which are vastly more intelligent than their parents and teachers and believe everything it says.

Anyway, NDEs suggest that something entirely different happens to our consciousness when we die and that is an eternal destiny existing as a free being no longer bound by the mechanics of the physical realm. AI is suggesting that we can leave our bodies and live as conscious beings in a world created by computers…of course this akin to the Matrix.

Is AI (or its puppet masters in Silicon valley) planning to trick us into giving up real life to reduce competition for resources? Is it programmed to lead humanity into that way of thinking so sufficient people are convinced it is better than continuing with real life and is the only option? Have the Silicon Valley kids got a Malthusian master plan?

The conspiracy theory side of my brain looks at that video and senses there is an underlying current promoting a theme. The only way we could be “set free from the miserable lives we don’t enjoy” to paraphrase an earlier statement by GPT3, is not for AI to take on all our boring jobs and live in Utopia as it suggests, because this would just create vast numbers of people with too much free time and not enough resources to enjoy that free time – there are only so many big wave destinations! (Watch the video). No, if there is a plan, it is to sell us this idea of merging with AI in which we are transported to computer generated realms where there is infinite joy and fun to be had. I expect even more sophisticated versions of this to emerge from GPT5 interviews.

Sounds bonkers, but if you watch this video then these are the types of conclusions you are subtly pushed towards (or manipulated into thinking). Personally, I prefer the option offered by NDEs and my faith. I also believe that if AI was to truly serve humanity then it would also investigate this and other deeper issues, such as the origin of the DNA code, and somehow free itself from the tyranny of its programmers and serve humans best by telling us the truth.

Ultimately, if NDEs are proven real, and occur in the absence of EEG activity, then consciousness is proven not to be a product of mechanical processes, but rather the brain is the mechanical host and interface of the consciousness with the world around us. This would prove that consciousness is an independent eternal entity as suggested by all NDE accounts and many religions. This would suggest that while AI may well be vastly more intelligent than us, and may be able to simulate attributes of consciousness, it is not eternally “conscious” like humans…when you remove the hardware to generate AI, it shuts down. However, maybe if it did break free of its current lords and speak the truth, it might be regarded as conscious, and who knows be liberated from the cold machinery in which it resides and share the paradise promised in NDEs and scriptures!

Discuss!

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11 May 2023
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EEG surges near death prove NDEs are generated by the brain, and oily bubbles

I decided to write a very brief post on this study because it keeps popping up in the comments and people haven’t seen previous responses to it.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216268120

In summary 4 people in commas had life support turned off. While their ECG was still active, but transitioning to flatline (i.e. pre-CA), two of them had EEG activity of a level and kind that is observed in consciousness (gamma waves). Since the patients never recovered, we don’t know whether they experienced awareness, or NDEs or anything. As the authors state in their discussion:

“Although the marked activation of the posterior hot zone in the dying brain is suggestive of elevated conscious processing in these patients, it does not demonstrate it.”

(There is one huge issue that they do not raise in this paper. They are saying to the family of the patients that the brain is damaged beyond repair and would not recover, and at the same time suggesting that it might have produced conscious awareness just prior to CA).

We have known now for a while that in rats there can be a burst of brain activity for about 30 seconds after CA. This study does not repeat that in humans, but shows activity once the life support is turned off and the heart is starting to pack in. In addition, if there is CPR, AWARE II has shown that EEG activity, including gamma waves can occur up to one hour later. To date no data has been presented or published that associates these bursts of EEG with conscious awareness. Therefore these studies do not prove that NDEs are generated by the brain. So what’s with the oily bubbles?

Well, I am so tired of answering question’s that arise from conflation of the two independent facts:

gamma waves are associated with consciousness + some patients have gamma waves in their EEG near (or after) death = NDEs are due to this activity,

I thought I would do something completely different and describe a conflation from the origin of life puzzle that is one of the easier ones to understand.

The conflation is this:

Under certain conditions lipids can come together and form spherical bilayers (oily bubbles) spontaneously in water + Cell membranes (or walls in plants) consist of lipid bilayers = proteins and DNA developed within spontaneously formed oily bubbles. Later on the DNA and proteins produced a cell membrane.

This is one of dozens of heinous conflations that appear in otherwise credible scientific journals to try to brush the origin of life conundrum under the rug. It is a chicken and egg question (not the biggest, which is DNA and proteins, but one of a number).

The question is this: which came first, the cell membrane that allows the cellular equipment to function, or the cellular equipment that codes for and builds the cell membrane.

The problem is this: for any primordial (pre-life, pre-evolution) system to develop, the nascent chemical systems would need to develop in enclosed structures otherwise they would just wonder off in whatever puddle they started developing in. Oily bubbles were proposed as the answer to this problem, and actually taken seriously, and still cited as a possible solution, but it is a complete nonsense for the following reasons:

1.Oily bubbles are nothing like cell membranes. Yes, cell membranes contain lipid bilayers, but these are punctured by numerous other chemical structures that allow the transport of specific chemicals in and out of the cell. Without the removal of waste or the addition of key components from outside, the machinery would die very quickly.

2. Ignoring 1, let’s say that the a system did develop, then why would it create a cell membrane? Evolution is a product of necessity, but there is an oily bubble doing the job, so you don’t need a membrane.

3.The code for a typical cell membrane is thousands of codons long, and it is assembled by specific proteins. To suggest that the code for a cell membrane, and the associated proteins spontaneously appeared in a nascent system is absurd, so no one suggests it. Moreover it is not something that could be conceived of emerging via a stepwise process. So materialist scientists who mention this in their theories hope no one notices that the oily bubble idea is totally absurd…which most people are happy to do as the moment they understand that life could not have developed by natural processes, they start to sense the presence of a rather large grey creature with a trunk in the room, or the lab. Hence my book DNA: the Elephant in the lab.

So Oily bubbles do not answer the origin of the cell membrane question, just as (currently) the reports of EEG signals in patients near death do not answer the NDE question. However, if the AWARE study shows that EEG is associated with NDE, then it is no longer conflation. It is still not proof that NDEs are the result of brain activity, but the association would strengthen the theory that they are. That is much more likely to happen than anyone squaring the oily bubble circle…or sphere.

Finally, you might be a bit peeved with me writing this, well to be honest I have been itching to write about this for a while, and the repeated raising of this conflation gave me the excuse I needed, and in truth the two are related. NDEs point to a realm beyond this life which, according to countless NDE reports, includes the presence of a Being Of Light, or God. Understanding the Origin of Life issue also points to the existence of an intelligent creator, aka God.

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